Return of Bird of the Week: Great Thrush

WC has exhausted his collection of even marginally presentable photos of Trogons, so we will move on to another family of birds, the Thrushes, the taxonomic family Turdidae. There are some 174 species of Thrushes spread across 18 genera. Some will be immediately familiar. Some will surprise you. WC has photographed only a small fraction of this large, widespread family of birds. But we will start with the largest member of that family, the Great Thrush. Spoiler alert: it’s good, but not really great.

The Great Thrush can weigh as much as 175 grams; for comparison, a big American Robin might weigh 77 grams. Some subspecies run to 33 centimeters in length; the America Robin is about 25 centimeters. The dark gray body, orange bill and legs are pretty distinctive; in the males, the orange eye ring is definitive.

This is a montane species, rarely…